March 11, 2026
In Project ACCESS, JFF is working with 10 community colleges to foster a collaborative public-private approach to identifying and scaling effective programs that lead to paid work-based learning and quality jobs.
The power of career-connected learning is that it helps learners enter the workforce prepared to succeed.
Career-connected learning is an integrated approach that links classroom instruction with real-world career exploration, advising, and skill-building experiences, such as work-based learning, short-term and stackable credentials, and dual enrollment, so that learners can move into and advance in high-demand, high-wage careers. It treats work-based learning as one important type of career-connected learning, alongside other models that help learners navigate options, earn credentials of value, and build professional networks.
People who participate in work-based learning programs not only gain in-demand skills; they also get valuable experience and build critical relationships in real workplaces that they can tap for opportunities and advice throughout their careers. Participating in work-based learning also improves near-term job prospects. According to a 2022 Strada Education Network report, college graduates who completed a paid internship earned, on average, $4,755 more in their first year than those who didn’t. Moreover, research from a 2025 report by the Center for Higher Education Research Policy and Practice found that students who participate in structured work-based learning are more likely to be employed one year after college. Additionally, researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and MIT found that, by forging relationships with colleagues and supervisors during work-based experiences, young people begin to build professional social capital that can open doors to employment and career advancement opportunities.
With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), automated systems, and other advanced technologies, employers’ talent demands are evolving at an accelerated pace. It has never been more important for learners to have access to meaningful career pathways and exposure to real-world on-the-job experiences, but many learners face barriers that prevent them from pursuing those types of opportunities. That’s why Jobs for the Future (JFF), backed by a generous $6 million grant from the PwC Foundation, launched the Accelerating Career Connections and Employment Success Strategies initiative, or Project ACCESS. In this initiative, we’re working with 10 public community colleges to identify and help accelerate scalable solutions that open quality career-connected pathways to all learners. The colleges have formed a vibrant community of practice in which they’re sharing ideas and insights and collaborating with one another to design new approaches to career-connected learning. In this report, we’ll explore promising practices that have emerged in the first year of implementation.
Community colleges sit at the heart of America’s talent engine, combining broad reach, program flexibility, and a tight focus on local workforce needs. However, they’re facing big challenges at a time when higher education in general is under historic public scrutiny, with institutions facing funding constraints, enrollment declines, rapid changes in employer demand for talent as industries evolve, rising expectations for affordability and return on investment (ROI), and a growing demand for flexible and relevant educational experiences that have clear outcomes and promote learner agency.
Despite these headwinds, community colleges play a critical role in serving learners and workers who face barriers to advancement in today’s labor market. At JFF, we see community colleges as important partners as we work toward our bold “North Star” goal: By 2033, 75 million Americans facing barriers to economic advancement will have quality jobs. That’s because community colleges enroll a significant percentage of students from populations that face barriers to economic advancement, including people without a four-year college degree, people of color, women of all backgrounds with up to a four-year degree, and people with records of arrest, conviction, or incarceration. Community colleges advance practices that meet these learners where they are and provide supports and connections that can help them succeed in their education and career journeys.
Community colleges are redefining the ROI of higher education through career-connected learning, competency-based education, integrated apprenticeships, paid work-based learning, and stackable credentials, which are a range of education, training and workplace skill building experiences that “stack” toward associate’s degrees through credit for prior learning and other mechanisms. Many community college students may have limited access to these types of opportunities because they’re navigating challenges outside of school, including jobs, caregiving responsibilities, financial and scheduling constraints, and transportation gaps.
Even work-based learning models with strong track records of success can fall short when not intentionally designed with all learners in mind. Through Project ACCESS, participating colleges are piloting new and improved approaches, iterating, and learning what it takes to reach all learners. By investing in and learning from these efforts, JFF and our key collaborators are clarifying how to move from pilot to institutionalized change at scale, upgrading data systems, deepening institutional collaborative relationships, and strengthening internal conditions.
JFF, backed by the meaningful grant from the PwC Foundation, launched Project ACCESS in the summer of 2024 with the goal of helping to close the gap between education and training experiences and employment opportunities that lead to quality jobs, which we define as roles that provide workers with financial well-being, safe and respectful workplaces, growth and development opportunities, agency and voice, and structure and autonomy. JFF and the PwC Foundation are united by a shared mission to help more people access economic opportunity. Through the direct funding from the PwC Foundation, JFF is accelerating models that connect learning with real, paid work-based learning opportunities and quality jobs.
A total of 127 community colleges (more than 10% of all publicly funded community and technical colleges in the United States) applied to be part of Project ACCESS. JFF selected 10 participants based on their vision, innovation, and readiness to expand paid work-based learning programming and drive quality employment outcomes for students. These colleges are located in eight states and represent every major region of the country. They each face their own unique workforce challenges, but they’re united by a belief that significant progress is possible when education and industry work hand in hand.
What sets this initiative apart is its combination of national reach and local implementation. Through Project ACCESS, each participating college is receiving $300,000 to scale its career-connected programming over the course of two years by strengthening and improving solutions tailored to regional labor markets and employer and learner needs. Yet they aren’t working on their own. The project is intentionally built around a learning network model called a community of practice, which gives colleges the ability to collaborate with and learn from one another. Additionally, each college is receiving coaching from JFF experts on its data and evaluation practices and its program strategy and implementation. This approach helps make sure that successful strategies don’t stay siloed—they’re shared and scaled to benefit learners across the country. Educators participating in Project ACCESS have stated that the community of practice model has proved to be beneficial. Three of them offered testimonials that are featured in this report.
Every strategy the colleges adopt as part of Project ACCESS is being evaluated based on measurable outcomes, with a focus on refining and scaling approaches that improve access, retention, and skill development for all learners and put them on pathways to careers in fields that offer quality jobs and opportunities for economic advancement. The goal of this collaborative effort is to demonstrate what’s possible when investment, innovation, and community leadership come together with a shared purpose.
The colleges participating in Project ACCESS comprise an eclectic mix of institutions that offer a variety of career-connected program models, enroll learners from a wide range of demographic backgrounds, and serve different types of regional economies in urban, suburban, and rural settings.
The table below lists the colleges participating in Project ACCESS, with information about the career-connected programs they offer, and the populations, industries, and communities they serve.
We used the following federal designations to describe the colleges:
| College | Location and Regional Setting | Institution Type | Career-Connected Program Offerings | Industries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bunker Hill Community College | Boston (Urban) | HSI, AANAPISI | Internships | Multiple |
| City Colleges of Chicago | Chicago (Urban) | HSI, PBI | Apprenticeships, Youth Apprenticeships | Multiple |
| Colorado Mountain College | Multiple locations in Colorado (Rural) | Rural, HSI | Apprenticeships, Youth Apprenticeships | Education |
| Columbus State Community College | Columbus, Ohio (Urban) | Title III | Earn and Learn: Extended Internship/Co-Op, Micro Internship | Advanced Manufacturing, Information Technology, Business and Accounting |
| East Los Angeles College | Los Angeles (Urban) | HSI, AANAPISI | Stackable Credentials, Career Navigation | Health Care |
| Edmonds College | Seattle (Suburban) | AANAPISI | Micro-internships | Multiple |
| Front Range Community College | Multiple locations in Colorado | HSI | Apprenticeships | Multiple |
| Middlesex Community College | Lowell, Massachusetts (Suburban) | Title III, AANAPISI | Apprenticeships, Pre-Apprenticeships, Youth Apprenticeships | Education, Information Technology, Health Care |
| Surry Community College | Dobson, North Carolina (Rural) | Rural | Apprenticeships, Youth Apprenticeships, Dual Enrollment | Multiple |
| Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT), Jackson | Jackson, Tennessee (Rural) | Rural | Dual Enrollment, Internships | Information Technology |
Many colleges in Project ACCESS are shifting toward flexible, workforce-aligned program models that are designed to be widely accessible to a broad range of learners and deliver outcomes that create opportunities for economic mobility.
Here are examples of the types of structures they’ve adopted:
While these offerings reflect broader trends across the country, what makes the efforts of the colleges in the Project ACCESS cohort noteworthy is the way these structures are being implemented inside community colleges—a factor that offers us timely insights into how scalable and broadly accessible career-connected learning programs can take shape in a wide range of contexts.
Colorado Mountain College (CMC) is building a sustainable, community-rooted teacher pathway through its Registered Teacher Apprenticeship program, which starts in high school and continues through credential-producing degree programs. High school students enrolled in the program engage in paid work-based learning through concurrent enrollment, earning early college credit and stackable credentials that flow directly into the adult Registered Teacher Apprenticeship. Along the way, they complete short-term certificates, associate’s degrees, and bachelor’s degrees in education—an approach that’s designed to accelerate progress and reduce cost. Many students continue into CMC’s post-baccalaureate program or graduate studies through partner institutions. This grow-your-own approach is tailored to learners from rural communities: Apprentices work in local schools, stay connected to their home districts, and often return as mentor teachers. With strong wraparound supports and a focus on affordability, CMC is expanding access to high-quality teacher preparation opportunities and building a stable educator workforce across Colorado’s mountain and rural regions. (To learn more about CMC’s Registered Teacher Apprenticeship program and hear the perspectives of participating students, read this JFF blog and watch the videos that accompany it.)
Designed to expand the local substance use counselor workforce, the Addiction Studies program at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) places lived experience at the center of training. All members of the program staff work in the field of substance use counseling and have a wealth of knowledge to share with students. In addition, many of the students have personally navigated addiction recovery as well as incarceration and/or housing instability, creating a powerful education model built on a foundation of trust between learners and teachers. Through trauma-informed supports, stackable credentials, and strong job placement pathways, the ELAC Addiction Studies program demonstrates how culturally relevant training can expand opportunities and transform who participates and leads in behavioral health professions.
In North Carolina, Surry Community College supports a regional dual enrollment and youth work-based learning program called Surry-Yadkin Works, which connects high school students in Surry and Yadkin counties and other local districts to paid work-based learning experiences in advanced manufacturing, health care, IT, and public service. Students earn high school and college credit while gaining real-world skills at local workplaces through a continuum of work-based learning experiences from job shadowing to preapprenticeship to apprenticeship. The program features strong employer partnerships and coordinated regional staffing. This “learn while you earn” model helps rural youth connect with potential career paths early, strengthens local talent pipelines, and provides employers with a steady source of motivated young workers.
In the first year of the implementation phase of Project ACCESS, we’re learning a lot about the “secret sauce” behind high-quality career-connected educational programs by working alongside colleges that already have a good deal of experience with work-based learning models.
Across the cohort, successful programs feature the following key attributes:
At the same time, our work has revealed that even strong models have room for improvement. Early project insights point to ongoing challenges related to data capacity, employer engagement at scale, scheduling and sequencing, and reliable access to resources.
For example, many colleges have thoughtfully designed programs but still rely on manual or fragmented data systems, making it difficult to track skills gains, analyze access barriers, or tell compelling stories to funders and employers. Furthermore, traditional work-based learning programs are often organized around colleges’ course schedules and academic calendars, which means talent is only available to employers at certain times of year, limiting their ability to hire people when the need arises—and likewise limiting access to paid learning opportunities for students who need to earn money while balancing school with other responsibilities, such as caregiving.
These tensions are instructive. They highlight where targeted investments, technical assistance, and intermediary support can accelerate what works, and where promising programs run the risk of stalling. In response, JFF has been supporting colleges’ efforts to establish baseline operational expectations by, for example, setting skills-acquisition goals, defining the metrics used to measure those achievements, strengthening employer messaging, and establishing strategic plans for expanding access, increasing retention rates, and improving program quality. As Project ACCESS continues, we will use the community of practice to identify and share insights on not just what works, but what it takes to sustain and scale high-impact models.
Project ACCESS uses a community of practice model to create a learning network through which participants can openly share insights, data, and practices to identify which approaches should be scaled and why. JFF provides targeted technical assistance (TA) and facilitation to support these activities, helping the colleges translate lessons into action and align on evidence-based approaches that are applicable across multiple contexts. In virtual and in-person meetings, focused TA sessions, and cross-community affinity groups, the community of practice builds a trusted learning environment offering access to peer expertise and coaching from JFF staff.
Together, we are looking for answers to questions like these:
Emphasizing shared learning, the community of practice clarifies what scaling can look like in practice across industries, populations, and regions. And the technical assistance that JFF offers includes support for data collection, evaluation, and capacity planning efforts to help the colleges learn how to measure and understand student perspectives as part of the work. Early examples of replication and cross-college collaboration are already surfacing, suggesting that promising pilots can lead to lasting institutional change. Colleges have already adopted and implemented practices benchmarked by peers in community of practice sessions, such as events where students formally sign up to become apprentices with specific employers and hands-on activities where students give work-related activities a try before committing to joining a work-based learning program.
Public-private collaboration is essential as community colleges navigate persistent funding constraints and rising expectations for measurable ROI. Learning together in partnership with philanthropies and businesses accelerates the development and scaling of effective programs, but scaling requires sustained, multiyear investments. Corporate partners can play a catalytic role, aligning program design with employers’ real talent needs, strengthening workforce pipelines in a career-connected learning system, and co-investing in solutions that last. This approach builds sustainable programs that can expand and grow, and it strengthens community and economic outcomes.
Public-private collaboration also aligns funding with regional talent pipelines and opens up new sources of funding that make it possible for colleges to launch initiatives that tuition revenue alone couldn’t support. For example, co-investment can underwrite paid work-based learning experiences, programs that lead to industry-recognized credentials, and the data systems needed to track outcomes.
Philanthropic organizations amplify impact by collaborating with colleges and intermediaries like JFF to do the following:
Paired with policy reforms that make career-connected learning a standard across community colleges, public-private collaboration can drive lasting change by enabling innovative programs that scale and thrive. Collaborative relationships can convert co-investment into lasting capacity and turn proof points into policy so that more colleges can scale what works and more learners can access affordable, career-relevant pathways that drive economic success for people, businesses, and communities.
As Project ACCESS moves forward, the focus will shift to deeper implementation, stronger collaboration, and clearer evidence of what drives meaningful outcomes for learners. Colleges will refine their models, expand paid work-based learning opportunities, and strengthen their pipelines. At the same time, they will build the infrastructure needed to sustain this work beyond this initial investment.
Sustainability is a major priority. That means continuous improvement, aligning programs with real labor-market needs, and developing durable strategies for funding and staffing. None of this happens alone, and progress will depend deeply on collaboration among colleges, employers, community-based organizations, and funders working toward a shared goal: expanding high-quality pathways into quality jobs.
Through the community of practice approach, JFF is eager to learn more about what enables effective work-based learning models, which structures better support students facing barriers to advancement, what employer practices create truly meaningful work experiences, which data infrastructures are most effective for measuring and tracking skills and employment outcomes, and which models scale most effectively across multiple regions. These insights will help strengthen career-connected learning programs at community colleges across the country and inform future iterations.
The vision remains clear: a system where every learner can access high-quality paid work-based learning that leads to real economic mobility. This is an important moment in time, and it’s essential to invest in efforts to scale solutions that connect learners to employers to drive economic advancement for all.
“JFF’s Project ACCESS offers one of the highest-quality communities of practice. The participating institutions and guest presenters consistently bring insight, depth, and practical solutions that strengthen our work every time we meet. It’s truly a model for how collaborative learning should operate.”
— Liz Qualman, Director of Teacher Education, Colorado Mountain College
“Working at the community college level often feels like being an island of one, so having a space to connect with peers through Project ACCESS has been invaluable. Engaging with others who do the same work, even in different states, gives us fresh ideas, perspective, and a trusted sounding board that strengthens our programs and our confidence.”
— Crystal Folger-Hawks, Executive Director, Surry-Yadkin Works, Surry Community College
“By working with the JFF community of practice, we hope to strengthen our workforce placement and create a streamlined, evidence-based training model that can be replicated and built upon. The feedback generated by the members has already been implemented and has proved to be beneficial.”
— Lisa Vartanian, Program Director, East Los Angeles College
For over two decades, the PwC Foundation has been a catalyst for change, advancing bold initiatives that expand opportunities and strengthen communities.
By directing grants to support innovative organizations and their solutions to empower communities, the PwC Foundation seeks to build inclusive pathways to career readiness and help expand access to educational opportunity through enabling the achievement of critical educational milestones, increasing engagement with career-building experiences and training, and expanding access and pathways to meaningful careers with sustainable wages.
